A key figure in the enigmatic electronic music genre, Jonathon Ng, known as EDEN, returns in full force on his latest album “Dark,” a beautifully haunting sonic dreamscape. Building on the experimental electronic pop sound he played with most prominently on his 2020 release “no future,” EDEN explores themes of heartbreak, loss and grief wrapped in his unique vocal and instrumental distortions.
Beginning the journey is “Still,” a bare-boned electronic track based in loops before devolving into a haunting chaos. Narratively, the track explores the feeling of watching someone slip away while you are still holding onto them. The narrator fights between their love and their thoughts of letting go, caught between desire and logic within a failing relationship. “Be dragged or let go, ’cause we’d all die for something / That won’t die for us,” EDEN sings. The album’s title, “Dark,” appears in the lyrics at the track’s closing as EDEN finds a solace in such thoughts of an end, singing, “I know it’s dark but it helps.”
From this heartbreaking start, the following 12 tracks detail a narrative of healing, balancing the darkness of these realizations with a light of hope for new beginnings. Most of these tracks feel shrouded in darkness; the instrumentals invoke a sense of haunting heaviness using synths and hi-hats.
“Ghost in the Shell” is the best example of this particular sonic landscape, its instrumentals blending and blurring as they echo in the song’s beginning. The chorus drops into a running beat across this instrumental, a muted kick rhythmically pounding as EDEN begs, “How can I make you see, you belong with me / Don’t you know you’re throwing it away” The song’s end is ethereal — vocals and guitars blend together with the distorted instrumentals as the narrator finds that the feeling they were trying to desperately keep alive is already fading away.
Against these more evocative tracks, there are plenty of moments of pure electronic pop such as “Zzz,” a breakup banger where an addictive synthline leads a catchy chorus. Here, EDEN sings with confidence, asserting it’s their lover’s loss that they left him behind. The following track “TEAM” has an incredible amount of layering; a chorus of hi-hats, claps, snaps, kicks and synths explode as EDEN grows enchanted with a new love, singing, “In and out of consciousness and a dream / Always on my mind just saying how I feel, yeah / Don’t you want to be on my team?” However, the brightest of these pop offerings is “gggiiiiirrrrlllll,” where the narrator’s vulnerable and joyful dive into a new relationship is perfectly complemented by the instrumental’s jumping melody lines and energetic kicks.
While the multiple instrumental and vocal distortions do have a hand in crafting the album’s unique sound, at times they drown out the lyrics, leaving the listener confused about what is actually being sung. For example, in “Light Sleeper” EDEN’s vocal distortion and softer singing garbles the words and makes it hard to understand the lyrics without reading them. These moments obscure the beautiful lyricism of the album. EDEN sings of battling loneliness and finding that delicate balance between being okay and buried in sadness. “I take refuge in arms of love / And bury my face in my friend / I came so close to the end / Saved or destroyed in a moment,” EDEN laments in “Light Sleeper.”
Ultimately, the strength of “Dark” is in its atmosphere.
In an interview with tmrw magazine, EDEN said he wishes that, above all, the listeners connect with the album.
“I just hope people feel it,” EDEN said. EDEN’s strength lies in how he captures emotion by building his instrumentals and lyrics, evoking the feeling of finally uncovering a long-forgotten memory. Whether it be through the vocal samples he places in the introduction of “True,” the image of a broken zipper in “Pocket (montreal)” or the raw vocals of “5ever,” EDEN imbues his music with a clear vulnerability that can’t help but wrap around the listener, pulling them into the meditative darkness of “Dark.”
